Quidditch World Cup Day Two

MSU, sadly, lost against to one of the other Quidditch teams early on the second day. It was a hard match to watch, just because MSU was working so hard. Mike, the Seeker, was getting criticized by the commentators for not ending the game by simply catching the snitch. And they kept calling us the University of Michigan, which is really rude and disrespectful. They didn't do that to other schools, and Michigan would not appreciate it either.

I am proud of how MSU played. They play hard no matter what, and I find that admirable. At the end of the game, they even sang "MSU Shadows," and it was just like being at school.
I decided to stick around and catch some of the other games. The day before, I had hung out with the Transylvania University team, so I decided to go find them. They had cheered for us during our game, so I was going to cheer for them too.
For teams that did not make it into the finals bracket, they scheduled skirmishes. Basically, this is a great opportunity for teams to play a lot of different schools they might not otherwise play. They can practice their strategy and see other teams' strategies too. So, basically Quidditch boot camp.
Transylvania played against John Hopkins. It was a close game, but Transylvania (who are the Animagi) were up. At one point, one of the John Hopkins players ended up on the ground. Hopkins chose to forfeit the game, in part because they were already down one player from another game. I hope that young woman who fell down is okay. She seemed to have the wind knocked out of her.

After that, I chilled with the team, taking some pictures and talking to them about this relatively new sport. Here's some of the Transylvania players posing for me.

One of the things they talked about to me was the history of their school. According to Thane, who usually plays Seeker for the team, Transylvania is about the sixteenth oldest school in the nation. Because of its geographic location, it was named Transylvania because that word means "through the woods."

Then something really surprising happened: MTV approached the team and asked if they would like to be filmed playing Quidditch. Transylvania agreed, and they had an MTV personality take over the role of a Beater to play the game. They got lots of shots of them talking about the game, what they were doing strategy wise, and even warming up. Here are some pictures of the team and Kevin from MTV warming up. Kevin is wearing a black headband to signify his position of beater.
Here's the team right before they start shooting some of the program.


Tractor had a rip in his jeans and they basically ripped off earlier that morning, which is why he's wearing half jeans half shorts in this picture.

I have a couple of extra photos posted up on flikr too.